Francis La Flesche

Francis La Flesche, first Native American anthropologist, Smithsonian Institution

Francis La Flesche (1857–1932) was the first professional Native American ethnologist; he worked with the Smithsonian Institution, specializing first in his own Omaha culture, followed by that of the Osage. Working closely as a translator and researcher with the anthropologist Alice C. Fletcher, La Flesche wrote several articles and a book on the Omaha, plus more numerous works on the Osage. He made valuable original recordings of their traditional songs and chants. Beginning in 1908 he collaborated with the composer Charles Wakefield Cadman to develop an opera, Da O Ma (1912), based on his stories of Omaha life. A collection of his stories was published in 1998.

Of Omaha, Ponca, and French descent, La Flesche was the son of the Omaha chief Joseph LaFlesche (also known as Iron Eye) and his second wife Ta-in-ne. He grew up on the Omaha Reservation at a time of major transition for the tribe. Before the establishment of anthropology programs, he earned undergraduate and master's degrees at the George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC. He made his professional life among European Americans.

Early life and education

Francis La Flesche was born in 1857 on the Omaha Reservation, the first child of his father Joseph LaFlesche's second wife Ta-in-ne, and half-brother to his father's first five children.[1] Their mother was Mary Gale, daughter of an American surgeon and his Iowa wife. After Mary's death, the widower Joseph (also known as Iron Eye) married Ta-in-ne, an Omaha woman. Francis attended the Presbyterian Mission School at Bellevue, Nebraska. Later he attended college and law school in Washington, DC.

By 1853, Iron Eye was a chief of the Omaha; he helped negotiate the 1854 treaty by which the tribe sold most of their land in Nebraska. He led the tribe as a head chief soon after their removal to a reservation and in the major transition to more sedentary lives. Joseph (Iron Eye) was Métis, of French and Ponca descent, and grew up mostly with the Omaha people. Working first as a fur trader, as an adult he had been adopted as a son by the chief Big Elk, who designated Iron Eyes as his successor.

Joseph emphasized education for all his children; several went to schools and colleges in the East. They were encouraged to contribute to their people. Francis' half-siblings became accomplished adults: Susette LaFlesche was an activist and nationally known speaker on issues of Indian rights and reform; Rosalie LaFlesche Farley was an activist and managed Omaha tribal financial affairs; and Susan La Flesche was the first Native American woman to become a western-style doctor; she treated the Omaha for years.

Career

In 1879, Judge Elmer Dundy of the US District Court made a landmark civil rights decision affirming the rights of American Indians as citizens under the Constitution. In Standing Bear v. Crook, Dundy had ruled that "an Indian is a person" under the Fourteenth Amendment. Susette "Bright Eyes" La Flesche had been involved as an interpreter for the chief Standing Bear and an expert witness on Indian issues. She invited Francis to accompany her with Standing Bear on a lecture tour of the eastern United States during 1879-1880. They took turns acting as interpreter for the chief.

In 1881 Susette and the journalist Thomas Tibbles accompanied Alice C. Fletcher, an anthropologist, on her unprecedented trip to live with and study Sioux women on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.[2] Susette acted as her interpreter. Francis La Flesche also met and assisted Fletcher at this time, and they started a lifelong professional partnership.

Nearly 20 years older than he, Fletcher encouraged his education to become a professional anthropologist. He started working with her in Washington, DC about 1881. After the lecture tour on American Indian issues, in 1881, La Flesche went to Washington, DC, where he worked as an interpreter for the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.[3]

La Flesche gained a position with the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution, with which Fletcher collaborated on her research. He served as a copyist, translator and interpreter. At the beginning, he helped classify Omaha and Osage artifacts, but he went on to do professional-level research with her, and acted as a translator and interpreter. He graduated from the National University Law School in 1892 and earned a master's degree there in 1893.[3] In 1891 she informally adopted the 34-year-old La Flesche.[3]

With their joint book and articles on the Omaha, La Flesche followed the anthropological approach of describing rituals and practices in detail. During his regular visits to the Omaha and Osage, and study of their rituals, La Flesche also made recordings (now invaluable) of their songs, as well as documenting them in writing. The young composer Charles Wakefield Cadman was interested in American Indian music and influenced by La Flesche's work.[4] Cadman spent time on the Omaha reservation to learn many songs and how to use the traditional instruments.

La Flesche's recordings are held by the Library of Congress and some are available online. Contemporary Osage tribal members have compared the impact of hearing the recordings of their traditional rituals to that of Western scholars reading the newly discovered Dead Sea Scrolls.[5]

In 1908 La Flesche proposed a collaboration with Cadman and Nelle Richmond Eberhart, to create an opera based on his Omaha stories. Eberhart had written lyrics for Cadman's Four American Indian Songs, as well as other of his songs. The team worked for four years on Da O Ma, which was changed to feature Sioux characters. Each approached the collaboration from a different point of view, and the opera was never published or performed.[4]

Beginning in 1910, La Flesche gained a professional position as an anthropologist in the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. This marked the second part of his career, as his focus changed with his independent research on the music and religion of the Osage, who are closely related to the Omaha.

"His primary objective was to explain Osage ideas, beliefs, and concepts. He wanted his readers to see the world of the Osages for what it was in reality-not the world of simple "children of nature" but a highly complex world reflecting an intellectual tradition as sophisticated and imaginative as that of any Old World people."[6]

La Flesche worked on the professional staff of the Smithsonian from 1910 until 1929, and wrote and lectured extensively on his research. He wrote and published most of his works during this time.

Marriage and family

La Flesche married Alice Mitchell in June 1877, but she died the next year.[7] In 1879 he married a young Omaha woman Rosa Bourassa, about the time of his tour in 1879-1880 with his sister and Standing Bear, but they separated shortly before he began working in Washington in 1881 and divorced in 1884.[6][7]

For most of his years in Washington, La Flesche shared a house on Capitol Hill with Alice Fletcher, with whom he worked closely, and Jane Gay.[7] Fletcher and La Flesche kept the nature of their relationship private. She willed money to him at her death.[6]

Legacy and honors

Works

References

  1. ↑ LaFlesche Family Papers, Nebraska State Historical Society, accessed 22 August 2011
  2. ↑ Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher, National Museum of Natural History, Archives of the Smithsonian Institution, accessed 26 August 2011
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 "Register to the Papers of Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Francis La Flesche", National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Introduction, Francis La Flesche, Ke-ma-ha: The Omaha Stories of Francis La Flesche, Lincoln: Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1998, accessed 26 August 2011
  5. ↑ Time Life Books. (1993). The Wild West, Time Life Books. p. 318
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Introduction, The Osage and the Invisible World, edited by Garrick A. Bailey, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, 26 August 2011
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Joan T. Mark, A Stranger in Her Native Land: Alice Fletcher and the American Indians, University of Nebraska Press, 1988, p. 308
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5 "Francis La Flesche, The Cambridge Companion to Native American Literature, edited by Joy Porter, Kenneth M. Roemer, Cambridge University Press, 2005, accessed 26 August 2011
  9. ↑ The Osage and the Invisible World, edited by Garrick A. Bailey, University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, 26 August 2011

Further reading

External links